Will you put up with the smallest of Letters rather than with none at all? I have hardly a moment; and no paper but this thick
coarse sort.

Understand always, my dear Sister, that I love you well, and am very glad to see and hear that you conduct yourself as you
ought. To you also, my little lassie, it is of infinite importance, how you behave: were you to get a Kingdom, or twenty Kingdoms, it were but a pitiful trifle compared with this
whether you walked as God commands you, and did your duty to God, and to all men. You have a whole Life yet before you, to
make much of, or to make little of: see you choose the better part2 my dear little Sister, and make yourself and all of us pleased with you. I will add no more; but commend you from the heart
(as we should all do one another) to God's keeping. May He ever bless you!

I am too late, and must not wait another minute. We have this instant had a long Letter from Mrs Welsh, full of kindness to
our Mother, and all of you. The cheese &c &c is faithfully commemorated as a “noble” one: Mary also is made kind mention of.
You did all very right on that occasion. Mrs Welsh says she must come down to Scotsbrig and see you all. What will you think
of that? Her Father in the mean time is very ill, and gives her incessant labour and anxiety—

See to encourage Jean to write; and do you put your hand a little to the work. What does Maister Cairlill3 think of the last letter he wrote us? Was it not a letter among many? He is a graceless man—

I send you a portrait of one of our chief Radicals here: it is said to be very like.

1. Carlyle's youngest sister, Janet, born 18 July 1813 (an earlier sister Janet, born 2 Sept. 1799, had died in infancy). She married Robert Hanning (d. 12 March 1878) on 15 March 1836, who after failing in business in both Scotland and England emigrated to Canada in Sept. 1841. His wife and daughters did not join him until 1851. Hanning was employed by the Great Western Railway from 1853 to 1878. His wife survived him until Dec. 1897, the last Carlyle of her generation to die. Emerson, upon visiting her in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1865, had exclaimed: “And so this is Carlyle's little sister!” Carlyle's letters to “the youngest stay of the house, little Jenny,”
were published by Charles Townsend Copeland in 1899 as Letters of Thomas Carlyle to His Youngest Sister. See Wilson, Carlyle, III, 236.